In the early 1840s, noted Bath-based geologist Charles Moore (1815-1881) was out for a walk in Ilminster, Somerset, when he saw some school boys kicking a rounded boulder about. On cracking it open, to his amazement, Moore found a perfect three-dimensionally preserved fish inside – just one of a collection of fossils revealing secrets about life 190 million years ago.

Now, thanks to the exception preservation conditions, and a collaboration between the BRLSI and palaeontologists from the University of Bristol, the fossils are revealed in a paper published this week in the Journal of the Geological Society.

‘It was obvious that these fossils were very special from the first time I saw them on joining the BRLSI’ says Matt Williams, curator of the collection.

‘Our stores are full of treasures, but these specimens are truly unique. We secured some funding to clean and curate them, and uncovered some unexpected treasures.’

larger juvenile crocodile skull of the same species and about as long as the whole infant specimen. Credit: Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution

The collection includes two species of ichthyosaurs, tiny marine crocodiles and hundreds of insects.

‘When Matt first showed me the fossils I couldn’t believe it’ says Professor Michael Benton from the School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, who is collaborating on the project.

‘There are 100 nodules containing a large fish called Pachycormus, five or six tiny marine crocodiles, and two species of ichthyosaurs. There are also early squid with their ink sacs and other soft tissues preserved, and hundreds of insects that had flown out over the shallow, warm seas of the day’.

The skull of a juvenile ichthyosaur, Hauffiopteryx typicus and a model made from data gathered through X-Ray micro CT. Credit: to Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution

The site, Strawberry Bank, has now been built over and lost, but work has begun in earnest on preserving and studying the fossils Moore first discovered 150 years ago. A grant of £250,000 from the Leverhulme Trust will fund three-dimensional scanning and further research, with fossil fish expert Matt Freidman of the University of Oxford.

Journal reference:

Williams, M., Benton, M.J. & Ross, A. 2015. The Strawberry Bank Lagerstätte reveals insights into Early Jurassic life. Journal of the Geological Society, first published online July 15, 2015, http://doi.org/10.1144/jgs2014-144

Help us create a 2016 #100geosites calendar!

This time last year, you were hard at work flooding us with nominations for our #100geosites project – over 400 sites made it into the longlist before public voting began.

In October, we launched the final list – 100 of the great geological sites you can see in the UK & Ireland, divided into 10 categories. Many people sent us beautiful images of the sites as part of their nominations – which got us thinking about other ways we could display the project….

The Calendar

The 2016 #100geosites calendar will feature 12 of our sites, with some background information about them and how to visit. It will also contain a map of the full list, as well as useful geological dates for your diary.

To create it, we need your help….

The Competition

To enter, send us an image of any of our 100 geosites. Winning photographs will be featured in the calendar, with full credit. In addition, first, second and third prizes will be awarded:

1st prize: £100
2nd prize: £50
3rd prize: £25

All 12 winners will also receive a collection of geological goodies, including our much coveted rock hammer usb sticks, and a year’s free subscription to Geoscientist magazine.

Remember, our 100 geosites are all across the UK and Ireland, and range from spectacular outcrops to buildings and museums – so there’s a huge variety of photo opportunities! Search for sites nearest you using Esri’s interactive map.

The rules

The competition is free to enter, and open to all. You may submit as many photographs as you like, depicting one of our 100 Great Geosites – either fully or partially. Photographs already submitted to us last year as part of the 100geosites project are welcome – provided they meet the minimum size requirements.

Photographs must be submitted electronically, with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi, and large enough to be featured in a print calendar (minimum dimensions: 216mm x 154 mm).

Entries must be emailed to 100geosites@geolsoc.org.uk by midnight on the closing date, Monday 21st September.

Prizes will be awarded at the Geological Society, as part of the launch of Earth Science Week on Monday 12th October, to which all entrants will be invited.

Entrants to the Joint Regional Group Photo Competition, ‘Geologica Britannica’ are very welcome to enter the same photographs in both competitions – provided eligibility criteria are met.

The 2015 Joint Regional Group competition is open to anyone living/working within the postal districts of the Southern Wales, West Midlands and North Western Regional Groups, and is open until 1 December – so if you’re eligible, why not enter both!

Some of the oldest marine animals on the planet, including armoured worm-like forms and giant, lobster like sea creatures, survived millions of years longer than previously thought, according to a spectacularly preserved fossil formation from southeastern Morocco.

The paper, available for free download, is published in the Journal of the Geological Society, and marks the beginning of a ‘Review focus’ series on fossil Lagerstätten. All future papers in the series will also be available for free download.

‘Extraordinarily significant’

The Lower Fezouata formation has been revealing exciting discoveries about life in the Ordovician – around 485 – 444 million years ago – since its discovery just five years ago.

‘Anomalocaridid Hill’, where many of the fossils were discovered. c. Peter Van Roy.

‘The Fezouata is extraordinarily significant’ says Professor Derek Briggs of Yale University, co-author of the study. ‘Animals typical of the Cambrian are still present in rocks 20 million years younger, which means there must be a cryptic record in between, which is not preserved.’

Over 160 genera have already been documented from the Fezouata, with much more expected to be found. They include animals which would have looked perfectly at home during the Cambrian: armoured lobopodians – worm like creatures with spines on their backs and short, stubby legs, and anomalocaridids – huge segmented animals with remarkable feeding limbs, which are some of the largest marine creatures of the time.

As well as demonstrating the longevity of fauna thought to have been extinct millions of years previously, the Fezouata proves that other creatures evolved far earlier than previously thought.

The oldest horseshoe crab, a subadult specimen showing the fused segments at the rear characteristic of living horseshoe crabs. c. Peter Van Roy

‘Horseshoe crabs, for example, turn out to be at least 20 million years older than we thought. The formation demonstrates how important exceptionally preserved fossils are to our understanding of major evolutionary events in deep time’ says Peter Van Roy, also of Yale, who first recognised the scientific importance of the Fezouata fauna and is lead author of the study, part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation.

The spectacular preservation, which includes detailed soft parts and organisms over 2 metres in length, is thanks to the fine grained, muddy sediments in which the organisms were preserved.

‘These are special rocks’ says Professor Briggs. ‘Some of the organisms are enormous – several metres in length. With such exceptional preservation, in a fully marine exposure, we can develop a reasonably full picture of what marine life looked like in the Ordovician.’

The discoveries suggest the ‘Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event’ – an explosion in diversity throughout the earlier part of the Ordovician period – may have been a continuation of the Cambrian explosion.

‘There is much more to learn from the Fezouata’ says Professor Briggs. ‘Why do we not see more assemblages like this in the Ordovician? What ecological changes happened at the Cambro-Ordovician interval? Are the Cambrian Explosion and the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event separate, or phases of the same event?’

‘Review focus’ articles

The oldest representative of the cheloniellid arthropods, which range to the Devonian. c. Peter Van Roy

‘The purpose of these articles is to present a distilled, forward looking review of a topic’, says JGS editor Professor Philip Donoghue. ‘We decided to start with a thematic series on fossil Lagerstätten since these deposits are fundamental archives of evolutionary history.’

‘By making the papers freely available, it is hoped they will interest a wide range of readers, from undergraduates, to specialists in the field, to members of the public.’

Journal reference:

Van Roy, P., Briggs, D.E.G. & Gaines R.R. 2015. The Fezouata fossils of Morocco; an extraordinary record of marine life in the Early Ordovician. Journal of the Geological Society, first published online, July 8, 2015, http://doi.org/10.1144/jgs2015-017

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Jurassic Park was over twenty years ago, and people just aren’t buzzed by a T rex like they used to be. The format is tired, the thrills too predictable. Audiences demand more.

For the makers of ‘Jurassic World’, the long awaited fourth instalment of the franchise, and also its fictional theme park world, the solution is the fabulously named genetically modified colour changing ‘Indominus rex’. That looks suspiciously like a regular Jurassic Park T rex with a slightly bumpier head.

Other than the new and improved dinosaur, the action proceeds in a familiar pattern – the film could almost be mistaken for a Jurassic Park remake, rather than a sequel. And the plot isn’t the only nod to the original – Jurassic World is shot through with references, from a tshirt worn by the token Nerd Guy, to the crumbling, ivy strewn original visitor centre, complete with the remnants of the iconic ‘When Dinosaurs Ruled the World’ banner.

It’s a lot of fun to see John Hammond’s original vision of a fully functioning dinosaur theme park realised. Some of the best ideas happen in the opening act – the baby Triceratops petting zoo, the gyroscopes, the Mosasaurus in its Sea World style water park. I can’t be the only person who was secretly hoping nothing went wrong – a romcom that just happened to be based in a dinosaur park would be all kinds of fun.

Of course, everything does go wrong, with the improbably intelligent escape of the Indominus, persued by the hapless ‘Asset Containment Unit’. That surely has to be the absolute worst job in the history of security detail. Needless to say, they are all fairly swiftly eaten.

Back to the dinosaurs – and like the T rex of the original, Indominus quickly loses the spotlight to the velociraptors, who are slightly bluer but no more feathery than the 1993 versions. It may be inaccurate, but the choice is understandable – a six foot snarling turkey is striking fear into nobody’s heart.

Velociraptors Are Go

As it is, they’re somewhat less terrifying than their 1993 counterparts, thanks to having been ‘whispered’ by the film’s token Hot Guy, Chris Pratt. They’re even employed in a sort of greyhound race, held back in little gates with muzzles over their noses, before being released in hot pursuit of the now rampaging Indominus. My money was on the blue one.

(As an aside – what was the thinking behind the Velociraptor whispering? Were they ultimately to be used in a live action show? It’s not surprising token Evil Guy was sniffing around, hoping to weaponise them – why else would anyone undertake this clearly insane project?)

If you were wondering – yes, there are also some humans in the film, who try to avoid being eaten and explain the plot to us. Not a one of them is a fully formed character, so there’s no need to spend any time on them – except to say that a conversation about childcare arrangements shouldn’t really count as passing the Bechdel test.

Anyway, back to the dinosaurs.

Best performance of the film goes to Dying Apatosaurus. It’s a nuanced, moving piece of dinosaur acting, full of pathos – and a nice nod towards the equally excellent performance of Sick Triceratops in the 1993 film. I also enjoyed Blue Velociraptor’s heroic charge in the final battle, plus a lovely surprise reappearance from Mosasaurus, who I’m fairly sure will feature in next year’s geobakeoff 100 point challenge.

In amongst all the dinosaur fun, there’s something interesting to say here about the ethics of live animal theme parks. I was reminded all the way through of Blackfish, and its terrifying footage of killer whales attacking their trainers after a lifetime of confinement. Yes, that was a documentary, and the whales never escaped their pools for an epic faceoff with the sea lions, but otherwise, the questions over ethics and safety, in a programme justified by ‘awareness raising’, are very similar. It would have been interesting to explore that more, rather than, say, the issue of whether a woman with a full time job should be held responsible for not looking after someone else’s very annoying children for a day.

Equally, token Evil Guy’s plan to weaponise the velociraptors for use in the military is strangely believable – you can’t help wondering if that’s exactly where this would end, were it to happen in reality. As it is, I’m looking forward to ‘Jurassic War’, where Chris Pratt’s velociraptors head out to battle in little camoflague hats, outacting him all the way.

Dinoshoes

In the end, the moral of Jurassic World is clear – if you let the money people run things, they will do anything, engineer any crowd pleasing hybrid, in order to satisfy a focus group and raise profit margins.

I can only assume this is the reason there’s now an incredible range of dinosaur themed fashion available in every major high street retailer. Having been searching for a dinosaur print jump suit for pretty much ever, I for one am very glad Jurassic World happened.

We launched the second annual Great Geobakeoff with some trepidation. Had geobaking fatigue set in? Was everyone too busy watching the General Election to notice? Is it in fact impossible to bake a hidden fossil cake?

Of course, our concerns were needless. Once again, the geobaking world has answered our call to arms, and produced a wondrous array of edible geological constructions. Many thanks to everyone who joined in, and we hope your kitchens have since recovered from the carnage.

As always, we set a list of ten challenges worth an increasing amount of points. First, though, some recognition for those of you who went freestyle and did your own thing. And why not? (You don’t get any points though. Rules are rules and all that.) Also to the Geological Society staff members who joined in with our own staff geobakeoff – of which more later…

Many thanks to everyone who submitted!

On to the points….

10 points: Mudstone cake

Mildly more exciting than last year’s sandstone layer, this one generated some appetising looking 10 pointers. Particular applause to Alexandra Booer who earned the distinction of baking our very first entry…

Now. Had we known the lengths to which you would go to achieve a cake based lahar, we would definitely have assigned this challenge more than 30 points. Well done to everyone who lahared, and particularly those who sent us a video to prove it!

lahar-tage

40 points: Mississippi Mud Pie

Our Mississippi requirements were pretty specific – either a geological map or bird’s eye view of the river delta. High five to our one intrepid geobaker who took on the first:

And to the several of you who created a cake based river delta…

50 points: Hidden William Smith Fossil Preserved in Mud Cake

At this point, we feel we owe you an apology, geobakers. It turns out we know a lot more about fossils than we do about baking, and a hidden fossil cake is in fact nigh on impossible. Extra respect and admiration, therefore, to the many of you who took on the challenge and won!

It has become somewhat traditional for the 100 pointer challenge to feature a scene from Jurassic Park*. (Naturally our favourite film.) Last year, it was hatching velocirapt0rs. This year, we took things one step further, and asked for this iconic scene. As a cake.

And conquering every geobakeoff challenge for the second year running, 570 points to geobakeoff queen, Liz Laycock!

This concludes the 2015 Great Geobakeoff – thanks to everyone who joined in! Hopefully we’ve all learned something. Not least, that hidden fossil cakes are really hard, and toilets are equally as difficult to construct as T Rexes.

See you next year…

*Suggestions for next year’s Jurassic Park scene are gratefully received. Or maybe we should wait for Jurassic World to come out?

A divorced search and rescue helicopter pilot (Ray, played by Dwayne Johnson) goes in search of his daughter in earthquake-hit San Francisco and is reunited with her and his ex-wife in the process. Yes, the Coast is toast – yet again.

Before I begin I should warn readers that this review contains what many would regard as ‘spoilers’. However, since ‘San Andreas’ delivers precisely zero surprises, I don’t feel very apologetic about them.

Some movies based on natural disasters come with ‘credentials’ (such as ‘Dante’s Peak’ – 1997, which boasted three serious scientific advisers in its credits) and get reviews in Nature. This is not one of those. What it is, however, is a simple, classic summertime disaster movie, duly affirming the usual ‘American values’ of never-say-die resilience and family – with a little pseudoscience chucked in courtesy of the brilliant Paul Giammati as sympathetic CalTech seismologist Lawrence.

Since Chuck Heston and Ava Gardner experienced Californian active tectonics in 1974’s ‘Earthquake’ (set in LA rather than SF, but close enough), we have all seen real tsunamis, and collapsing skyscrapers, in news footage. We have also learned something about sequential earthquake triggering. And we have CGI.

The CGI means relying less on shaky camerawork to induce terror and awe, while all the rest help the screenwriter to avoid the basic problem with earthquake movies of the past, which was that once the anticipated event had happened, they were all obliged to spend far too long in anticlimactic ‘aftermath’ mode, with only the odd aftershock or precariously poised piece of fallen masonry to keep up the excitement.

Seismologist Lawrence is cast in the usual role of Cassandra – the one who Sees-It-All-Coming-But-Nobody-Listens. There needs to be one of these in a disaster movie, for without anticipation there is no tension, and everyone loves seeing a maverick proved right. Lawrence has a breakthrough in earthquake prediction, based, apparently, on (unexplained) ‘magnetic pulse precursors’ observed during the destruction of the Hoover Dam, which starts the whole chain reaction in motion that will lead eventually to the destruction of San Francisco.

These unexplained signals do not, however, appear to give very much useful warning in themselves– just enough, in fact, to say ‘OH MY GOD!’ before the Earth cracks. However, thanks to his understanding of the quakes’ connectedness he is able to get the word out about a third, even bigger quake on its way, whose epicentre will be right under the deepest car parks of California’s jewel. The earthquakes are propagating fitfully, from one locked section to another, he realises – though they do so in a time-frame far shorter than happens naturally.

Otherwise the film is hardly interrupted by such technicalities, and its cliché-ridden plot unfolds exactly as you expect it to. The evil property developer (such is that profession’s inevitable fate since ‘Towering Inferno’) gets his comeuppance, family values triumph, everyone resolves to rebuild, US Flag (Size No. 1) is unfurled on the remains of the Golden Gate Bridge, and the surviving cast, reunited by disaster, stares heroically at the distant horizon as credits (and eyes) roll upwards.

Goofs? Well, plenty. Apart from everything already mentioned, our kindly bearded & jumpered seismologist talks erroneously about ‘the Richter Scale’, and (more seriously) the strike-slip fault that is the San Andreas is not really tsunamigenic, even assuming it could ever deliver a M9.6, which it couldn’t – such faults can never store up enough stress.

But – and there is a but – everyone plays their parts well (even though you can almost see Paul Giammati thinking: ‘This junk will fund me in at least two years of independent theatre’). The story is neither original nor scientifically kosher, but the film is spectacular to watch, falls just short of embarrassing, and isn’t either too long or so boring that it seems that way.

Even ‘the English guy’ Ben (Ray’s daughter’s romantic interest, played by Hugo Johnstone-Burt) is allowed to be heroic (which I suppose in Hollywood terms counts as original). However he, too, is only allowed to do what he must, which is to play second fiddle to capable, kick-ass daughter of the movie’s central character. ‘Ray’ is played with a good deal of conviction, and no small aplomb, by Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson (of whom nothing is small, at least that we can see). While nowhere near Giammati or anyone else on set when it comes to acting chops, ‘San Andreas’ once again confirms that Mr Johnson is a much better actor than any former wrestler has a right to be.

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A couple of weeks ago, we headed to Lyme Regis for the annual geological extravaganza that is the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival, armed with fossils, badges, geological colouring in and a brand new activity.

This year, for the first time, we took part in the schools programme, talking to over 140 primary school children about all things geological.

One of the many school groups to visit our stand

As we’re celebrating the Year of Mud and the William Smith Map Bicentenary, we wanted to take a long an activity which would relate to both. Many thanks to the palaeontologists from Leeds University and the Palaeontological Association for inspiring our solution!

Make Your Own Fossil Casts

*This activity is great for children up to the age of 9/10 – though some adults have found it equally fun…

If you’re taking the activity to a festival or other event, we recommend pre preparing the dough – but if you don’t mind making a mess, you can make it part of the activity!

Mix the flour and salt together, and add enough coffee to create a fairly stiff dough – not too sticky. Add in some used coffee grounds for an authentically sandy texture.

Once the dough is kneaded together, you can roll it out on some grease proof paper, or press it into a small container.

Piles of pots ready for the festival!

Then, all you need are some fossils suitable for making a good impression. Press them into the dough, and they will leave behind a cast. You can also use toy plastic animals to create footprint trace fossils.

If left with the lid off for a few days, the dough should harden, creating a rock like trace fossil for you to keep!

You can use this activity to link to lots of ideas about fossils. Fossil casts are the print left behind by a plant or animal on the surrounding material. What kinds of materials would be best for capturing and preserving imprints? Why do only some parts of the fossils survive? Where is the fossil itself, and what might have happened to it?

Identifying and understanding fossils was a crucial part of William Smith’s work to create his first geological map of England and Wales. By using fossils, Smith was able to establish a relative chronology which allowed him to identify strata of the same age and show where they occur at the surface.

Other activities

We also took along our ever popular colouring maps of William Smith’s map, and the geology of the local area.

And, of course, the GSL badge collection – with a couple of new additions for 2015…

A badge collector models the full set

If you have any suggestions for other mud-based educational activities, we’d love to hear them!

And remember, Earth Science Week 2015 is only 5 months away – 10-18 October. Some great activities have already been planned, and we look forward to receiving many more.

For the first time this year, we have a number of small grants available to help with running Earth Science Week events – visit our website for more information.

The annual photography competition, organised by a number of our Regional Groups, is now open to all geologists, amateur or professional, living within the postal districts of the Southern Wales, West Midlands and North Western Regional Groups.

Last year, nearly one hundred entries were received, representing famous geological locations from Namibia to Iceland and Bude to Torquay. The winning entry was Malcolm Nugent’s ‘Etna Beneath our Feet.’

The 2015 Competition

William Smith’s 1815 geological map, c. The Geological Society of London

2015 is the bicentenary of William Smith’s famous geological map, ‘A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales’ (1815). The Society is also marking 2015 as the Year of Mud. It would be remiss of us to let these pass unnoticed.

So, the West Midlands Regional Group, in joint partnership with the Southern Wales and North West Regional Groups of the Society and Black Country Geological Society present a Joint Geological Photographic Competition, sponsored by Geotechnical Engineering Limited, on the theme of ‘Geologica Britannica: Exhibiting the Geology of the British Isles and Applied Geology in the British Isles’.

In the early hours of 25 April, 2015 a magnitude 7.8 earthquake occurred in Nepal. The largest the country has experienced in over 80 years, the earthquake occurred due to thrust faulting resulting from the subducting India plate and the overriding Eurasia plate to the North.

The earthquake occurred approximately 80km to the northwest of the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu, in an area where the India plate is converging with the Eurasia plate at a rate of 45 mm/yr towards the north-northeast, driving the uplift between the India and Eurasia plates. The earthquake was followed by several aftershocks including a magnitude 6.7 earthquake on Sunday which triggered more avalanches on Everest.

Kathmandu Durbar Square before the earthquake

The earthquake has devastated many areas of the Himalayan country. Its effects, including avalanches and landslides, have cut off many towns and villages. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) at the time of writing (29 April) the earthquake has claimed more than 5,000 lives, left more than 8,000 people injured and over 8 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.

Fellows and members of the public may find the following resources useful to understand the geological context in which the earthquake occurred, the history of tectonics in this region and earthquakes more generally.

Nepal Earthquake and Seismic Hazards in the Himalaya

USGS have put together some information on their website detailing when and where the earthquake occurred and the tectonic setting with some useful maps and diagrams.

As part of GSL’s 2014 conference on Sustainable Resource Development in the Himalaya, Tim Wright of the University of Leeds gave a lecture on ‘Active Deformation and Seismic Hazard in the India-Asia collision zone’ which includes some background on the tectonics of this region. You can find his presentation on the GSL website.

In anticipation of the upcoming Lyme Regis Fossil Festival, which takes place from May 1-3 this year, let’s set off on a literary and geological tour through the charming streets and beaches of Lyme Regis, which is also known as the “pearl of Dorset”. We will be travelling through time, so hold on to your geological hats and period bonnets! Continue reading →